Oracle wrote:
Yeah, I take that back about 代 - but it is certainly less common than a generation or so back.

When I worked at an old people's hospital in Japan a lot of the elderly women (in their 80s, 90s and a couple 100+) often seemed to have much shorter names and frequently didn't have (or just didn't use) kanji for them. Some of the ones I remember were ones like カメ and トメ. There were quite a few 〜代 but not that many 〜子 among them

I love the DQN Names page, it's like the Japanese version of Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing. A lot of the comments that people leave for the names are hilarious

For more...ordinary names, http://www.emusu.net/seimei/ has a 名前人気度 page that tracks which names are most popular with their users. It seems that 瑛太（えいた） has become a popular boy's name on that site (tied at #2 with 駿, pronounced しゅん or かける), I guess this is because of an actor with the same name. And 璃子 is tied with other girls' names at #6, again probably because of teenage actress 成海璃子. Also some rather...odd "tryndee" (to borrow a term from BNaBBT) readings of kanji...though some of them are just 名乗り readings, like かな for 愛. At least せふれ、あなる、そうか or any of the other DQN delights aren't on the list :p

There is an organization in Japan, I think an insurance company or something, that releases lists of the most popular baby names for the previous year, but I forget their address...

Last edited by doinkies on Mon 02.18.2008 4:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ぷう？ I know that this is another language, but doesn't it sound funny to the Japanese too? (I don't understand the "memo" listed for the page, but is that what they're referring to?)

In the dialog, they discuss how odd it sounds and how he got teased in school for it. DQN is sort of like a Japanese version of "Babies Named a Bad Bad Thing". For the record, the Kanji listed for the name are "yellow" and "bear". It appears to be a Winnie the Poo reference. I'd hope no one actually has named their child this...